CDs Are Selling Again. Your Laptop Probably Cannot Read One

US CD revenue rose 58.6 percent in the first half of 2026, according to the RIAA - which is a fine thing to read on a laptop that has no disc drive.

A miniature front door whose letterbox slot has been plastered over, with a letter leaning against the step below, under the words CDs Are Selling Again

The numbers came out on 1 September, and CDs were the fastest-growing format in them.

They are also still the small one, which is the part worth holding on to.

Then there is the practical problem nobody covering this has mentioned.

What the RIAA Actually Reported

US recorded music brought in just under six billion dollars in the first half of 2026, up 6.9 percent. Physical formats grew fastest of all, at 25.9 percent.

Format	First half 2026	Change
CD	$171.1M, from 17.5M discs	up 58.6%
Vinyl	$543.8M, from 26.5M records	up 17.7%
All physical	$731.5M	up 25.9%
Streaming	$4.89B, 82% of the total	up 4.7%
Downloads	$121.0M	down 12.7%

Those are wholesale dollars rather than shop prices, which is how the RIAA reports it. The download column is the quiet story: buying a file outright is now the only format going backwards.

The Part the Headlines Leave Out

CDs grew faster than vinyl this half. They also earned less than a third as much, so a big percentage off a small base is doing a lot of work in that headline.

Digital Music News makes the sceptical case, and points at K-pop, whose fans buy physical copies in a way no other audience does. Luminate reportedly still found growth in the high single digits with K-pop taken out, so something real is happening underneath - just something smaller than 58.6 percent.

The full-year figures are what will settle it. One good half-year is a bump, not a comeback.

So You Bought a CD. Now What?

Here is the awkward bit. Most laptops sold in the last ten years have no disc drive at all, and Windows quietly dropped CD ripping when Windows Media Player was retired.

A USB optical drive costs less than two albums and solves the hardware half. The software half is free.

fre:ac is the one to start with - it rips, converts and tags, it is genuinely free, and it was updated last month. For a disc that is scratched or precious, Exact Audio Copy reads each track repeatedly until it is certain it got it right.

Rip to FLAC, not MP3. You own the disc and the drive is doing the work either way, so take the FLAC copy - it is identical to the original and you can make MP3s from it later. Going the other way is not possible.

There are a dozen more in our audio encoders section, including the paid ones with better disc databases.

Quick questions

Are CDs really outselling vinyl now?

No. CDs grew faster this half, but vinyl still earned more than three times as much money. The growth rates crossed over, not the totals.

Why would anyone buy a CD in 2026?

Price mostly - a CD typically costs a third to a half of what the same album costs on vinyl. You also get a copy nobody can remove from a catalogue.

My laptop has no disc drive. What do I need?

An external USB optical drive, which is inexpensive and needs no drivers on Windows or macOS. Then free ripping software does the rest.

Is ripping a CD I own legal?

It depends where you live, and the rules differ more than people expect. Copying a disc you bought for your own use is treated far more leniently than sharing the files.

Which format should I rip to?

FLAC if you have the space, because it is an exact copy and converts to anything later. MP3 or AAC only if the files are going straight onto a device that is short of room.

Does Windows still rip CDs on its own?

Not reliably. Windows Media Player did it for years and its replacement does not, so a free third-party ripper is the practical answer on a current machine.